WASHINGTON (February 1, 2018)—A leaked draft of the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) misrepresents the status of China’s nuclear forces, according to a white paper released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

“China has made slow but steady incremental improvements to its nuclear arsenal,” says paper author Gregory Kulacki, China Project manager at the UCS Global Security Program. “But the gap between China and the United States is too wide to argue that the United States is lagging behind in any meaningful way. In fact, the exact opposite is true. By any measure, the U.S. arsenal is far superior.”

Regardless, the leaked NPR draft erroneously states that the United States needs new nuclear weapons because “China is expanding and modernizing its considerable nuclear forces” and is pursuing “entirely new nuclear capabilities.”

Among other things, the paper points out that:

the U.S. arsenal of 4,480 active and reserve nuclear warheads is more than 10 times the size of the Chinese arsenal;

the United States has 400 ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, at least four times more than China’s 75 to 100 ICBMs; and

“There is no evidence that nuclear weapons are becoming more prominent in China’s military strategy or that China has changed its longstanding no-first-use policy,” says Kulacki. “Chinese military sources emphatically state that China’s only security objective with its relatively small nuclear force is to retain the ability to retaliate in the event of a nuclear attack.

“If the Trump administration were truly concerned about limiting the size and capability of China’s nuclear forces,” he added, “it would ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which China signed in 1996, and negotiate a fissile material control treaty, which China supports. Doing so would cap the size of China’s nuclear arsenal.”

1.This Month

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Changing climate change“2040” paints an optimistic picture of the future of the environment

The film focuses on technological and agricultural solutions that are already being implemented to help combat climate change, The Economist Feb 19th 2019

by C.G. | BERLIN ……….In “2040”, a documentary which premiered at the Berlinale, Mr Gameau seeks to wrest hope from the bleak reports of climate change. He was inspired by Project Drawdown, the first comprehensive plan to reverse global warming, and the film is intended as a “virtual letter to his four-year-old daughter to show her an alternative future”. “Many films,” Mr Gameau thinks, are too dystopian, and “paint a future that is really hard to engage and to connect with”. “2040” acknowledges that the Earth has set off down a hazardous path, but focuses on the work that is being done now to steer the right course. What, the film asks, could make 2040 a time worth living in?…. (subscribers only) https://www.economist.com/prospero/2019/02/19/2040-paints-an-optimistic-picture-of-the-future-of-the-environment